Disassembled
by ultharkitty
Summary: G1, Dysfunction AU. After the Spare Parts Incident, Swindle tries to apologise to Brawl, but it all goes wrong. Set just after B.O.T. Contains dark themes and violence. Now with a sequel in which Vortex confides in Blast Off.
1. Disassembled

**Content Advice:** dark themes, violence, torture as punishment, threatening behaviour, a bit of humour, a touch of h/c (no smut)

**Characters:** Combaticons

**Beta:** Naboru_narluin

**Notes: **The formatting on this site is weird and won't allow a double forward slash (which I usually use to denote speech via comms), so I've had to use a forward slash and Italics. Hopefully this is clear.

* * *

.

* * *

"You didn't think my pers'nality component mattered?" Brawl howled. His optics dimmed and his shoulders slumped. "You…"

"It's not like that!" Swindle cried. "I didn't mean it! I only said it to get Megatron off my back, I was gonna go look for it, I swear!" It was only half a lie. He would have, eventually; those things were valuable.

Brawl headed for the exit, but Swindle darted around him and flattened himself against the door. If Brawl left, he could go anywhere; Combaticon HQ was so much easier to fly away from than the Nemesis. Swindle would never find him.

"Get the frag outta my way," the tank snarled.

"Brawl, please, I didn't mean it! You gotta listen to me!"

"NO!" Brawl yelled. "I don't gotta listen to nothing! You sold me on, you rust-bitten, no good, money grubbin' turbo-rat! You left my pers'nality bits in a squishy scrap yard, and you told Megatron you didn't think it mattered!" He raised his fist, and Swindle winced, but didn't dodge. The impact was tremendous; it sent him flying, his helm cracking against the wall.

"Brawl, please!" Swindle's vision blurred; his audials rang. "Brawl!"

But the only response was a snarl and the hiss of the opening door.

* * *

.

* * *

"Hey, Thrusters." Swindle poked his head into the rec room. Blast Off sat by the window, his feet on a table and a datapad in his hand. He didn't look up.

Swindle reset his vocaliser and tried again. "Uh, Thrusters?"

Blast Off still gave no indication of having heard. He shifted his legs, his cannons realigning.

It wasn't until Swindle spoke again that he realised the cannons had realigned to point at him. "Thrus-" he managed before a bolt of violet light took out the door and most of the frame. He leapt back, the blast searing his paint and making his olfactory sensors sting.

"Don't call me that," Blast Off said.

"Look, uh," Swindle sidled over to the wall; one of the cannons followed the movement. "I don't wanna disturb you, I just… I need to find Brawl. Have you seen him?"

"Ask Onslaught," Blast Off responded. "Now leave."

This time, Swindle caught the telltale whine of the cannons powering up. He ran.

* * *

.

* * *

Swindle found Onslaught in his office.

"I ought to have you incarcerated," Onslaught said. Swindle braced himself, but not against a physical blow. This time, it was the disappointment that hit, the cold fury of Onslaught's glare, the disgust in his tone. "I should lock you up and only bring you out for active duty. Your avarice almost cost us our lives."

"I," Swindle began, but Onslaught raised a hand and cut him off.

"What part of our situation do you find difficult to grasp?" Onslaught asked. "Cybertron is unattainable, the loyalty programming renders a coup impossible, and we remain alive _only_ at Megatron's whim." The edge of his battle mask twitched, and air sighed through his vents. "Without Bruticus, we are nothing. Do you have any idea how close we came to annihilation?"

Swindle's fuel lines ran cold. He nodded; he could still feel Soundwave's hands on his helm, the chill pressure of the bomb against his CPU. And the seekers holding him down, gripping too hard, twisting his limbs.

"No," Onslaught said. "You don't. This team is the only reason we're alive. Individually, we have nothing that Megatron could want that he doesn't already possess. But together…" His voice grew louder, grating on Swindle's audials. "But we're _not_ together, are we? You haven't just compromised the cohesiveness of this fighting unit, you have utterly obliterated it!"

Swindle fought the urge to back away. Onslaught remained behind his desk, but that was no guarantee that Swindle was safe from his fists. Or his guns.

"Remember when we last combined?" Onslaught said, and Swindle pressed his hands to his sides to prevent them from shaking. "Remember what Bruticus did? Well, can you?"

Swindle nodded. "Yes... Yes Commander." He remembered only too well. How Bruticus just hadn't seemed to work. How their combined form had raised his arms to shield his face as the Autobots shot him. How he'd never once reached for his gun, and his thoughts had been slower than usual, each component battling against the next, each fifth of himself isolated and agonised and enraged.

"That was your doing," Onslaught said. "_You_ are to blame."

"I tried to fix it!" Swindle wailed. "But Brawl wouldn't listen and now I can't find him. You gotta tell me where he is, I can fix this, I can, I just need…" he trailed off, the snarl of Onslaught's engine cutting through him like a buzzsaw.

"Use the bond," Onslaught said.

"What?" Swindle shook his head. "But Vortex…"

"Use," Onslaught repeated, his fists clenching. "The. Bond."

Swindle nodded and stared at the floor. He tried to relax, to force the tension from his frame so when Onslaught struck him the damage wouldn't be so bad.

But Onslaught remained where he was. "Dismissed."

* * *

.

* * *

Vortex was on the helipad. The sun hit his cockpit, and his rotors revolved slowly. Swindle could just make out the pale glint of a repair bot clinging to his landing gear.

Maybe he was in recharge? Swindle hoped so. He loathed Vortex's mind. The vicious tangle of cruel needs and urgent impulses, the fragments of memory and snatches of data from his sensor net: the things Vortex never could keep to himself, and never seemed to want to.

It was vile.

Certainly better if Vortex was in recharge. But Swindle had no way of telling without accessing the bond. Unlike Vortex, Swindle kept his side closed, an iron wall against the synaesthetic flood of things he never wanted to experience. All he could tell was that Vortex was alive.

Swindle held out as long as he could. He leant against the warm metal wall of medbay, and looked up into the fathomless blue of Earth's strange sky. He wished Brawl would just come back. Or that he'd answer his comms, pick up his messages, anything.

But he didn't.

Swindle's fans engaged, his vents already heaving. A nasty sickness bubbled in his fuel tank. Vortex might not be in recharge long; it was now or never.

Swindle sent the command to access the gestalt bond.

The rush of data was overwhelming. He knew his team, suddenly and in intimate ever-changing real-time detail: their vital status, their locations, their fuel levels, core temperatures, the activity levels of their CPUs. Swindle fought to hold it off, to dig through it just for Brawl, for the few essential details. But there was so much. And mixed in with it all, tainting everything, was Vortex.

He wasn't in recharge, and his anger was terrifying.

/_A bit late for that, don't you think?_/ Vortex commed him.

/_Hey! Uh… Just getting a few things,_/ Swindle said, his senses reeling. The data was too much; he was used to splitting his attention, but not like this. Dimly, he heard the sound of a transformation, the roar of root mode thrusters, but he couldn't get his optics to focus. With a force of will, he closed himself off again.

"I've been waiting for you," Vortex said, his voice altogether too near. "Waiting for the others to get fed up with you."

That didn't sound good. "Gotta find Brawl," Swindle said. A patch of red became a visor, a small spark of blue became the glow of a laser scalpel. "Vortex, wh… what are you doing?"

"You sold us," Vortex said. He lunged and Swindle made a break for it, but too slow, too clumsy. Vortex grabbed his arm and swung him into the wall. Then a twist, a snick, and Swindle howled as a hot flare of agony spread out from his shoulder. Hazard warnings flashed across his HUD, and hydraulic fluid gushed from the severed hose, dripping down his back.

Swindle activated his distress beacon. "Vortex, please, don't do this…"

"No-one's coming to help you," Vortex whispered. Another snick, and Swindle's visual feed blanked for one dizzying moment. He choked back a scream, and tried to comm Onslaught, Blast Off, Brawl, but none of them responded. Then his vision returned, the wall of medbay resolving slowly from a field of grey. He could no longer feel his arms.

"We need to stick together," Swindle squeaked. "I know that now, I do, I'm sorry, please."

"Sorry?" Vortex laughed, and Swindle whimpered as the numb rubber of his tires parted, one by one, and the internal sensors registered a dangerous loss of pneumatic pressure. "I don't give a flying scrap about sorry. You sold us to the squishies, you gave them my personality component."

"I didn't mean to!" Swindle yelled, but it didn't stop Vortex from swiping his legs out from under him. And it didn't stop the interrogator from landing a solid kick in the small of his back. "I thought you were done for!" Swindle gasped, sand filling his vents and clogging his mouth. "I couldn't get the parts to repair you, you were all in stasis lock! You gotta let me go." He twisted his neck, tried to spit out the muck. "I gotta find Brawl!"

"You knew we were alive," Vortex snarled, each word punctuated with another kick. "You don't get it, do you? Sorry isn't good enough."

* * *

.

* * *

It was Onslaught who finally pulled Vortex off him. Onslaught who laid the copter out, and carried Swindle to repair bay. Onslaught who programmed the drones, and stood by him as they worked. He maintained eye contact, letting Swindle know that he knew he was conscious, even though he could do nothing to respond.

Swindle had been a quarter breem from stasis lock, another breem from permanent deactivation. And Vortex would have done it, he had no doubts.

No, no doubts whatsoever. Just pain and regret. And a heavy weight of shame as Onslaught continued to look at him, silent, unreadable.

He had sanctioned it. Swindle knew it like he knew Vortex would never have stopped without intervention.

Onslaught finally left when Blast Off commed him to say that Vortex was conscious. Swindle would have purged, but his fuel tank was empty, and he had no control over the feed from the external reservoir.

No control over his limbs either, or his engine, his jaw, his glossa. The only thing holding him together was his armour; on the inside, Vortex had taken him apart.

He almost panicked when the door opened.

"Hey, Swin…"

/_Brawl?_/ Swindle strained to see, but the door was outside his field of vision. At least his internal comms were still working.

"Yeah, uh, it's me." Brawl approached slowly, his footfalls uncharacteristically light. "Listen I, uh… I never told him to… Tex just does stuff."

/_Yeah,_/ Swindle said. /_I know._/ He focused on the sigh of air through his vents, a regular flow that was completely out of his control. He didn't want to think about Vortex's motivations, or what he could have done if Onslaught hadn't taken him offline. /_Say, Brawlie…_/ he said. /_I know it don't mean scrap, but I really didn't mean to frag you over._/ Like before, it wasn't exactly a lie. He'd considered the balance of profit and loss, and the outlook had been promising. How wrong he'd been.

Brawl loomed, his visor bright. "I was kinda mad about that," he said. "I, uh, I still kinda am."

/_I'll make it up to you,_/ Swindle replied. /_Whatever you want._/

Brawl walked away, and Swindle fought to find the right words to bring him back. /_I'm not trying to buy you off!_/ he began, but Brawl came back all by himself, carrying a chair.

"I know," the tank said, and sat down. He patted Swindle on the shoulder, the buzz of his EM field conveying only friendly reassurance. "How long they gonna take to repair you anyways?"

Swindle tried to shrug, but he was a long way from independent movement. /_I dunno,_/ he said. /_A while?_/

"OK." Brawl looked around. "Frag, this place is dull. You wanna watch squishy TV? They got this show where this grounder's got a pet human and they fight all these other humans. It's kinda good."

Swindle relaxed, suddenly very glad that his frame wouldn't betray his feelings. /_Yeah,_/ he replied. /_Let's do that._/


	2. Sunrise in Space

**Title:** Sunrise in space

**Rating:** PG-13

**Content advice:** dark themes

**Characters and/or pairings:** Blast Off, Vortex, mention of others

**Summary:** Vortex confides in Blast Off, but the shuttle would really rather not know.

**Notes:** This follows on directly from Disassembled, although some time has passed between the two, and references Taking One for the Team and Unaccustomed Feeling.

* * *

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* * *

Blast Off lounged in geocentric orbit. The sun rose slowly over the wide curve of the Earth, illuminating a field of space junk. His alt mode scanners pierced the clouds, mapping the ground and highlighting potential sources of energy. He paid them little heed, more interested in the sunrise. Dividing his attention was worth the effort; it was so wonderful away from his team.

'Thrusters?' A line of text appeared in his HUD. Great, Vortex. 'Thrusters, you there?'

Blast Off sighed and corrected himself; it _had been_ wonderful away from his team. He composed a line of text in response. 'Message undeliverable. Recipient is currently offline.'

The response was immediate. 'Yeah, right. Thrusters, we need to talk.'

'No,' Blast Off responded. '_You_ need to talk. And repeating that ridiculous pet name at me does not encourage me to engage you in conversation.'

'Uhuh, whatever. Listen.'

'You mean _read_,' Blast Off replied.

'You know what they say about pedants? They say pedants get really tetchy team mates.' There was a pause, and Blast Off began to wonder whether Vortex was sufficiently discouraged to leave him alone, but then a new line of text appeared. 'The combiner programming... Have you noticed any... side effects?'

'Side effects?' Blast Off returned. He had: an unwelcome surge of empathy, his panic at seeing Vortex maimed and unconscious after the dust storm, his urgent need to get the copter to Hook. A snarl shook his instruments; the programming had fabricated emotion, making him respond in ways he never otherwise would. But he'd rather fly into the Sun than admit it.

'Yeah,' Vortex wrote. 'Side effects. You know, like how the loyalty programming was all itchy and stuff and made me wanna kill Ramjet?'

Blast Off vented slowly and turned his nose to the sun. The heat was welcome. 'I don't believe that's entirely the loyalty programming,' he replied, then continued quickly to head off any protests to the contrary. 'But yes, I comprehend the nature of your query. Have you...' He stopped; he couldn't believe he was about to ask a direct question. Encouraging Vortex to talk; what in the universe was wrong with him? But he continued anyway. 'Have you experienced anything unusual?'

'Uh...' Vortex sent, and Blast Off wanted to shoot him. It was bad enough that Vortex often refused to distinguish between the verbal and written conventions of their language, but the meaningless little sounds transcribed as glyphs were just too much.

'Words,' Blast Off wrote. 'Proper ones. Use them.'

'You know that thing with Swin?' The text was plain, no serifs or elongation of the vertical to indicate emphasis, but Blast Off nonetheless got the impression that Vortex wasn't quite in his right mind. Not that his right mind was ever entirely right.

'Yes,' Blast Off replied. How could he forget? They'd all been angry after the Spare Parts Incident, but what Vortex had done to Swindle went beyond ordinary revenge. Every cable severed, every connector sliced or burnt or crushed. Only the most rudimentary link had remained between Swindle's laser core and his personality component.

It was no surprise that Swindle was still alive, nor that Onslaught had allowed the 'punishment' until the last possible moment. But it was a surprise that Vortex hadn't initiated an interface, hacking Swindle's sensor net to transfer every last synaptic impulse to himself.

There was a long pause before Vortex responded. 'It made me wanna purge.'

_And?_ Blast Off thought, but then his intellect caught up with him. That wasn't right. Vortex didn't 'wanna purge' because he took someone apart. Blast Off had seen him work, had witnessed him play as well. Vortex didn't get squeamish when he killed someone; he got excited. 'What do you mean?' Blast Off asked.

'It was all right at first, kinda good y'know. But then it got... not so good.'

'I'm not sure I follow,' Blast Off responded, and he wasn't sure he wanted to.

'You ever had anyone pour a _really_ strong alkali down your auxiliary fuel intake?' Vortex asked, but he didn't wait for a response. 'It was like that, kinda. Like... like I got a virus or something. Core temp went all screwy, equilibrium chip glitched. Couldn't think straight, just... Just wanted to stop.'

'And did you?' Blast Off asked. He wasn't sure what had happened at the end, only that Onslaught had intervened, had taken Swindle to med bay and Vortex to the rec room where Blast Off had been ordered to watch him until he came around.

'I didn't have a choice,' Vortex replied. 'Ons hit me. He laid me out.'

'Would you have stopped by yourself, if Onslaught hadn't hit you?' Blast Off asked.

'I don't know. I still... I chucked my tanks in the holding cell. Ons thinks I did it on purpose.'

Blast Off checked the frequency, hoping for one fleeting moment that it wasn't actually Vortex he was talking to, that it was someone playing a bizarre and frankly disturbing practical joke. But the frequency was right, the tone was right. It couldn't have been anyone else.

'It didn't come from me,' Vortex sent. 'It isn't me, I don't do that. It's the programming.'

'The programming has no effect on our core personalities,' Blast Off wrote, and it didn't, he was sure of it. The effect was in their emotive responses, their physiological reactions. Or his and Vortex's anyway. Queasy, he quashed the memory of his team mate in stasis lock, inert in his hold as he shot towards the Nemesis. 'The combiner software is merely an augmentation.'

'I know,' Vortex replied, and Blast Off could imagine him pacing, his rotors utterly still, his fingers twitching. 'But it's doing something to us.'

'To you,' Blast Off lied.

'Same thing,' Vortex responded. 'You'll see. It'll get you, sooner or later. It's changing us, it's giving us new limits, making us... do stuff we wouldn't do if we didn't have it. This thing Starscream put in our heads, it's just a new kind of prison.'

'Stop being melodramatic,' Blast Off began, but Vortex was gone, the signal lost. Odd, but it wasn't necessarily due to the copter's actions; Earth's weather could have strange effects on Cybertronian communications.

Still, the astroseconds stretched into breems, and Vortex made no attempt to renew their conversation. With any luck, he wouldn't raise the topic again.

Blast Off rolled to show his underside to the sun, and focused for a while on his scans. But despite the glare of solar radiation, and the frequent distracting pings as new energy sources were identified, analysed and categorised, he couldn't relax.

The sun on his plating just didn't seem so warm any more.


End file.
